December 31, 2002
Times Fantasy
Buzzflash's news analysis of the New York Times is brilliantly funny. (See "...What are they smoking in the editorial board rooms of The New York Times ...") It's the kind of humor that arises from someone just speaking lucid common sense in an environment where people are used to a kind of formalized groupthink that is only a step away from mass madness. It is the point of view of the the outsider, the zen master, the idiot, or the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes".Buzzflash lifts a paragraph from the New York Times and isolates it from its normal context. Seen outside of the environment of The Paper of Record, it does appear to be deluded.
"No one has put more effort than George W. Bush into ending the image of the Republican Party as a whites-only haven. For all the disagreement that many African-Americans have with his policies, few can doubt Mr. Bush's commitment to a multiracial America. But unless the president wants to spend his next campaign explaining the majority leader's behavior over and over, he should urge the Senate Republicans to get somebody else for the job."
This comment comes from a fantasy world. This is not the George Bush I know. Do they really believe his PR, or do they just want the rest of us to? Or do they just not have the guts to call a conniving politician what he is?
What seems to be happening is: as actual events become more and more extreme, the New York Times -- in struggling to maintain its fantasy vision of reality -- is forced farther and farther from the obvious truth.